Updates

My job system is progressing well. Just pass the milestone of "one job can queue another job and wait for it", which was a bit touch and go. Generally, it now works!

Next, I want to spend a little time optimizing it a bit. The overhead over a simple serial function is still a bit too high (even if it does very well when multi-threading). Afterwards, start using it to build everything else.

I took some time off and managed to put most of it into Synekism's job system. I'm quite pleased with the results. It's a very important part and it was a bit of a gamble. It requires features in C++ that are not even part of a future standard (coroutines). Microsoft's compiler is still having trouble with them. But the approach seems to hold and I can now start building on top of it (the rest of the game).

Last update for the year and I have nothing to report. I was quite lazy (and I was busy at work as usual). I hope to singe a different tune next update as a I have some descent vacation time coming up. Till then!

Last month was a bit slow for Synekism as I had to travel. I was at Unite LA. Not too much to report.

On the timelapse side, my camera is dying again and needs replacement. This will be this camera's third repair (after over 600,000 pictures). Sigh. That said, did I mention the building that all this was for actually started construction a few weeks ago?!

Good month! On the timelapse project side (remember that?), I'm finally going to rack servers. I assembled my first server rack this weekend and moved one of my storage servers to a rack-mounted case with hot-swappable drives.

On the Synekism front, I made descent progress on my containers library (mostly wrapping the STL) and my threading library.

May saw above average progress on what I've started calling Synekism 3.0. In reality it's more like Synekism the-second-rewrite-attempt. The good news is that I'm almost at the point where 3.0 is as far as 2.0 (the first rewrite). This means I'll soon go where I haven't been in over 4 years (last working release was in 2014!). Oh well.

I'm trying to avoid over-engineering this time around but C++ is just so easy to get high on...

About

Synekism is an attempt at a modern city simulator rooted in procedurally
generated content. The project was started in 2010 to address some frustrations
with the city simulation video game genre. It is actively developed on
and currently in a purely alpha-experimental stage. Updates on the project are
posted on the first of every month. Note that work on this project is more
or less done by one person so progress will be slow, but steady.

The game is a sandbox where control is not explicit but
indirect. The player can designate residential, commercial, industrial, and government
zones and watch them grow, instead of explicitly plopping each building manually.
The game tends to lean towards macro-management.

The key features of Synekism include grid less 3D environments and procedurally generated
buildings. The lack of a grid results in total freedom when zoning and building roads
allowing for more realistic looking cities. Procedurally generated buildings allows
for more visual variability. Instead of querying a finite list of static models, a
building is generated uniquely upon creation using local as well as city-wide conditions.